Kids crawling under trains. A ProPublica investigation focused in part on Hammond spotlights the dangers of trains that park in the middle of neighborhoods and intersections—blocking crossings, sometimes for days, and forcing children to risk their lives to get to school. (Screenshot: Gray Television/InvestigateTV.)
■ Problems with at least two Chicago bridges—Michigan Avenue and Lake Street—caused commuting headaches yesterday.
■ A new bridge over DuSable Lake Shore Drive gives pedestrians, bicyclists and wheelchair users easier access to the lakefront …
■ A new bridge over DuSable Lake Shore Drive gives pedestrians, bicyclists and wheelchair users easier access to the lakefront …
■ … and a Sun-Times editorial calls that good news “in a city historically rife with inequities caused by … racially restrictive urban planning.”
‘They were arriving on buses. Now, they’re coming on planes.’ Block Club Chicago reports that migrants sent here on one-way flights from Texas are sleeping at O’Hare as the city scrambles to find them shelter.
■ By one estimate, more than 6,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending busloads of them here.
Blown away. Police have charged a 79-year-old suburban man with the murder of a neighbor—apparently the final act in a long-running quarrel over noise from the victim’s leaf blower.
■ The Lake County state’s attorney: “Once again, easy access to firearms has turned a dispute into a deadly crime.”
■ The owner of a Naperville gun shop is taking his fight against the city and state bans on assault rifle sales to the U.S. Supreme Court.
‘Excessive.’ A First Amendment expert is among those raising concern about a Cook County Circuit Court order forbidding everyone—including reporters—from bringing cellphones, laptops or any electronic devices into the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse.
■ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce: “Neil Gorsuch is the latest [Supreme Court] justice to show off some fancy financial footwork.”
■ The Daily Show’s Roy Wood Jr. looks ahead to his turn as host of Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner: “There will be Clarence Thomas jokes.”
‘I am filled with … sadness and anger.’ Chicago families are pleading for a reprieve for a school that services students with special needs.
■ Columnist Jan Resseger praises an insightful 10-year review by Crain’s Chicago Business of “the damage of Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 school closures” …
■ … a report that, in a refreshing change of pace, lives outside Crain’s hard paywall.
About Time. Axios reports that, 12 years after first imposing a paywall on its web content, Time magazine will end that practice June 1 …
■ … which brings Time in line with your Chicago Public Square publisher’s philosophy for years—as expressed into a too-hot mic at the 2020 Chicago Journalism Town Hall: Growing audience is Job. No. 1 …
■ … and then you ask for money:
If you think ChatGPT lies in English … You should try the AI chatbot in Chinese, where a NewsGuard exercise finds it’s even more full of 拉屎.
■ Insider’s Jenna Gyimesi: “I used ChatGPT to talk to my boss for a week and she didn't notice.”
■ The New York Times: “Watch an A.I. Learn to Write by Reading Nothing But ______.”
‘A near-perfect adaptation.’ Critic Richard Roeper gives three-and-a-half stars to the movie adaptation of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
■ Puck: Hollywood’s running short on (young) movie stars.
Illinois’ world of music. An exhibit originally mounted at the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield opens today at Navy Pier …
■ … honoring, to quote Axios Chicago, the state’s “musical giants from Earth, Wind & Fire and Chance the Rapper to Wilco and Cheap Trick.”
■ Might be a nice place to stop with the kids after today’s Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day fun.
R.I.P., Jerry Springer. The former Cincinnati mayor whose Chicago-based talk show became one of the nation’s most controversial and profitable is dead at 79 …
■ … at his home in the Chicago area.
■ His hiring as a commentator for Chicago’s NBC 5 prompted anchors Carol Marin and Ron Magers* to quit in protest.
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* Both Chicago Public Square supporters, thank you so much.